JonnygATL

I know I just looked back at the previous pages. Shoulda done that before posting! My bad! Yeah, the marketing speak is really confusing and annoying. SIGH indeed.

It's interesting how using either "metro area population" or "city population" yields wildly different results. For instance, the Lexington, KY metro area appears at #107 on the first list, the list that ranks metro areas by population. However, on the second list that solely takes into account the city proper, Lexington appears at # 64. Makes a huge difference in rankings, especially considering that Sprint is aiming for the top 100 (of whatever category they deem appropriate/workable/realistic given their particular circumstances and needs. But I'd say they'd likely go with the top 100 metro areas, not the city proper rankings. It would be more beneficial to them (sorry Lexington). That said, they do still plan to eventually upgrade ALL of their towers with 2.5 ghz b41, right? Or has that changed?

Is DC still "languishing?" I thought maybe they'd resolved by now whatever issues they were having. Apparently not. I feel for you DC peeps!!

I didn't even realize that Procol Harum released the original song in the late 60's. The Sarah Brightman version is the only one I'd ever heard. I learned something new yet again! But, pop culture references aside, I don't think even a summer in Newfoundland could turn me alabaster or even eggshell. Lol

Ha...have you not seen me? I'm "golden" in winter and "frappuccino" in summer.

I was mostly kidding. I actually HATE summers here in Dixie. Barf. I'm meeeelllltiiiing! If I could summer in MN and winter in the ATL, I'd be golden.

He could always move. As in out of Duluth.

The galaxy s5 sport for Sprint announcement that went along with this is already receiving the typical anti sprint trolling word vomit in the comments section on cnet. I mean, unless you live in a trailer then you're already experiencing a completely different network from sprint. It's awesome how far they've come. I actually connected to b41 for the first time here in Atlanta the other night while driving past Piedmont Park on my home from work. It was cool but the best part is that the network here is so good that I don't really even really need band 41. How's that for an improved network?

Well said.

Whatever the outcome, I am certain NSN will do an exponentially better job than Ericsson could or would have. The installs from NSN are due to begin in July. I believe I read that on one of these forums here. It will be awesome to have those sorts of speeds that band 41 can deliver but in all honesty I don't have any issues at all with the LTE speeds here in Atlanta on bands 25 and 26. This will all just be proverbial icing on the proverbial cake.

yeah what you're describing sounds exactly like ecsfb issues but this time related to the rollout of band 26.

Lovely. Well the spotty Clear towers that have already been converted to LTE here are, fortunately, nowhere near my home nor my work. Once the Sprint installs of LTE on NV sites really crank up then I guess I will have to suffer through it. But I can always just disable band 41 during these growing pains and reenable it once it's stable.

I love the conversations I read in these forums. It's fascinating and I learn a ton every single day!

So will b41 also suffer from ecsfb issues when it is first turned on on Sprint NV sites (the way b26 did/does)?

All indications are that that, indeed, was the case. On another note, is NSN out deploying b41 on Sprint sites yet? If Sprint is to get the first 100 million online with b41 before the year is out then I would imagine they need to get a massive move on.

Thank you. Me,too!

I think that is precisely your problem. Well, that and b26 ecsfb issues. I experienced the same thing here in Atlanta - obviously an Ericsson market - until they resolved the issues. The phone works beautifully now. Don't worry..they'll work it out fairly soon.

I can personally tell you how beautiful it is once ecsfb issues are cleared up. The difference is definitely night and day. Instead of wanting to bash my phone to smithereens with a hammer, I now feel at least at parity with my vzw, att and tmo toting amigos. What's more I can see the light clearly at the end of the tunnel when I will be THEIR envy as soon as b41 is fully rolled out by the holidays here in Atlanta. That's going to be un dia muy dulce!

Crap. I dunno how I overlooked that. Thanks!

Yes, I know, I'm familiar with the methodology. I did read that part as it's vitally important. However, that is precisely my concern "this point in time." I am wondering what that "point in time" actually was, especially considering that when scrolling through the (actually very neat and informative) photo sets from each of the 29 cities where Sprint is relevant, one can't help but notice that some photos seem to be shot in spring while others seem to be shot in winter or summer. So I guess I would need to know if these were all photos the author uploaded during her tours of these cities as she conducted her tests (as would seem to be the case given her excessive use of hashtags) or were some of the photos taken by others and she simply uploaded them to reflect certain aspects of her trip? If they weren't taken by her then I could understand the apparent vastly different points in time in which they appear to be taken. But if she took them herself during testing then it would be concerning as it would indicate that these tests were not, in fact, all conducted at the same, all-important "point in time." This is my concern.

I think that is exactly my concern as well. It colors the results when the network is actually much better than the results would suggest. More important are the continuing and substantial upgrades going on right now that won't be evident to most readers/users until a year from now when the next PCMag test hopefully shows a greatly improved network. I just really think it's high time for some positive press on Sprint. And, despite what another user suggested, going from bad and even awful to usable and even somewhat more than adequate is a MASSIVE change. I'm happy for Sprint and am glad I stuck around.

Getting back to intelligent discourse...my N5 after the update here in Atlanta is performing admirably well. It very effectively switches between bands 25 and 26 as necessary and very rarely falls back to 3G. I am happier with this phone now than I have ever been since purchasing it. I am curious as to when PcMag did these speed tests in Atlanta but, as we all know, network performance is very dynamic and so I would venture to guess that the speeds and coverage now are far better than they were when these tests were conducted. I have no experience with band 41 yet so I can't really comment on that though I know that there are many active band 41 (old Clear) sites within the city. Once I have some experience with b41 on my N5 I will post comments on its performance here in Atlanta. But my speeds are far more than adequate and my coverage has increased quite a bit due to the increasing prevalence of b26. One final note - if you drill down into the PCMag article, you will see mention of bouncing back and forth between 3G and LTE in several of the 30 cities studied. This would seem to me to be an ecsfb issue which I would imagine by now has been resolved. This is a HUGE reason that Sprint seemed to perform so RELATIVELY poorly if I am correct. Again, I think a lot of that has since been cleared up. I don't think the article's author was aware of any of that.

My N5 after the update here in Atlanta is performing admirably well. It very effectively switches between bands 25 and 26 as necessary and very rarely falls back to 3G. I am happier with this phone now that I have ever been since purchasing it. I have no experience with band 41 yet so I can't really comment on that though I know that there are many active band 41 (old Clear) sites within the city. Once I have some experience with b41 on my N5 I will post comments on its performance here in Atlanta. But my speeds are far more than adequate and my coverage has increased quite a bit due to the increasing prevalence of b26.

I would be shocked if they mentioned anything about a potential merger with Tmobile just yet. It is much too soon and is still technically just a rumor even though we know they are working on it behind tightly closed doors. That event would probably wait until the beginning of Q3.

I saw this and wanted to slap the nearest person standing next to me. But it turned out to be Adrienne and I really like her...so I didn't slap her. HOWEVER....it just enraged me because I'm so tired of people hating on Sprint's network. It's just non stop and I really don't get it. The article was honestly well written and seemed pretty fair (it's from PCmag for anyone who's wondering) but I think they missed the point. Sprint's network has improved in incredible ways since their last survey one year ago. We've gone from unusable 3G speeds to a nationwide average - per their results - of around 0.8 mbps. This may seem slow compared to ATT or Tmo 3G speeds (which i think here are HSPA+ speeds) - but they are perfectly usable for casual web browsing and even downloading and/or streaming music. To go from unusable to a low ping decent 3G connection is night and day. But they didn't mention that. Regarding LTE, Sprint's nationwide average - again, per their results - hovers right around 7 mbps. Um...that's really good and certainly falls within Sprint's advertised LTE speeds (outside of launched Spark markets). It's also a HELL OF AN IMPROVEMENT from last year or the year before when Sprint didn't even have LTE in many of the cities in which these tests were conducted. And who isn't happy with a 7 mbps cellular data connection anyway? Oh yeah, I forgot - people who don't really know much about how all of this works. Marketing teams love people like that. What do you need to do on a mobile device that a 7 mbps (also with a decently low ping) connection couldn't easily handle? The rollout of b41 will only improve on this even further. But I forgot...Sprint "sucks." Yeah, right.